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Your Neurochemical Self

Love is letting down your guard, and defensiveness is snapping it back up. You have good reason to be on guard sometimes, but defensiveness doesn’t get you what you want. Your partner quickly pulls up their guard too, and seconds later a good relationship is off the rails. Here are three alternative strategies.

It often seems like "they" are standing in the way of your happiness. But if you conquered “them,” you wouldn't be as happy as you imagine. Your happy brain chemicals are hard to make sense of, but when you understand them you have all the power you need in the world.

When you feel like the world is judging you, it helps to know how your brain creates that feeling. Animals compare themselves to others, and we have inherited a brain that compares and reacts. You can free your inner mammal from this cage when you know how it works.

It's easy to feel judged and annoyed during the holidays. When you know how your brain creates those feelings, you can replace them with feelings you'd rather have. It's hard at first, but you build new neural pathways that make it easy to go positive instead of going negative.

Many children learn unhealthy habits despite our best intentions. It helps to know how the brain builds habits. Our brain learns when something feels good, because that releases happy chemicals that connect neurons. We can teach our children that self-care feels good.

You may not realize how much you are traumatized by watching the news. Turning it off may not seem like option. But when you know why your mind is so drawn to the news, you can decide whether to live in the bubble created by journalists.

Frustration is a good thing because it tells you when Plan B is a better use of your energy. Our frustrations are often blamed on modern society, but monkeys had the same frustrations 50 million years ago. They evolved a brain that thrives on frustration, and your brain does too.

Your compassion can make things worse if it rewards self-destructive behavior. Your urge to help can undermine someone's ability to help themselves. Your personal power substitutes for theirs, despite your best intentions. It's time to re-define compassion.

Children say "no fair!" when they don't get what they want. Maturity helps us restrain this impulse, but it doesn't go away. Your mammal brain rewards you with serotonin when you get the upper hand. When others seek the one-up position, it seems wrong, but when you do it, it just seems fair. Get to know your inner mammal and your frustration about fairness will ease.

Atheists engage in the same thought habits they disdain in religion: they judge, they seek redemption from sin, and they insist others think like them. Atheists want to exclude other belief systems from the public forum, but democracy requires all belief systems to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Finding flaws triggers the good feeling of dopamine. It's counter-intuitive, but your brain is designed to reward you with a good feeling when you find something relevant to your needs. You can't always find rewards, but you can always find threats and obstacles. The dopamine soon passes and you have to find another flaw.

Is anger a virtue? It's easy to think so when those around you do. It's easy to see facts that fit and ignore facts that those around you ignore. I let other people's anger in for too many years, but I learned to diversify.

The flaws of the world are easy to see so it's hard to imagine you've created them with your mind. But if you take a break from criticizing, new information will shine in. So why does it feel like you're going through withdrawals when you stop criticizing?

A big brain can terrorize itself with its own awareness of death. To stop that cortisol loop, imagine a stool resting on three legs: control, distraction, and building a legacy. The seat of the stool is your ability to sit with your cortisol for 20 minutes instead of fueling it.

Winning feels good because it triggers dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. These happy chemicals reward behaviors that promote survival in the state of nature. Watching others win triggers happy chemicals because of mirror neurons. Competition can be frustrating so it's important to understand why your inner mammal is drawn to it.

Mental health services promise us a life without emotional pain. It's not surprising that so many people are lured by this promise. But emotional self-regulation is a learned skill. Services can help people build skills but they cannot deliver and ideal state that has never existed.

Emotional distress is part of the human experience, but today's culture suggests that "the system" should relieve your distress for you. It's not surprising that so many people are expecting something they're not getting. That is not a crisis. People have been responsible for their emotional self-management since the beginning of time.

It's hard to believe that an American girl could be convicted of "Satanic ritual murder" without evidence in our times. It's even harder to believe the public response to the Italian conviction is so limp. After reading the evidence, I am convinced this girl is innocent and needs our help.

When you blame your frustrations on others, you waste brainpower that you could have spent meeting your needs. Instead, think like a mountain goat when focusing on your next step. Your brain cannot climb a mountain and curse it at the same time.

If your life seems like nothing but problems, your brain is doing its job. Your brain focuses on the one missing tile when it looks at a beautiful mosaic. But you can train yourself to see the good things you've overlooked by knowing how your happy chemicals work.

I recently fed pigs on a farm, and saw how they bite each other over crumbs. Biting works in the pig world. It teaches other pigs not to get in your way. We humans work hard to restrain our aggression, and we learn to release it in appropriate ways. But sometimes we reward aggression inadvertently.

Sex triggers oxytocin, a brain chemical that makes you feel safe. The oxytocin is gone quickly, though, which leaves you feeling unsafe. You can trigger oxytocin in new ways if you know how your brain works.

My guest blogger teaches conflict-resolution in a prison. She calls herself a "resolutionist" because she sees New Years resolutions as a fun way to rewire yourself. Everyone can wire in new responses by repeating a new behavior.

Dopamine makes you want. Without dopamine, no temptation plagues you, but you don't feel joy either. As we enter the season of temptation, it's good to know why dopamine turns on. You have power over that dopamine feeling when you understand it.

About Your Neurochemical Self

Happiness is a surge of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin or endorphin. These brain chemicals evolved to do a job, not to surge all the time. When you know the job they do in earlier animals, you can make peace with your inner mammal. You can wire yourself to enjoy more happy chemicals and relieve more unhappy chemicals. Your old wiring was built by accidents of experience in your youth. It will shape your ups and downs until you build a new place for your electricity to flow. It's not easy being a mammal, but we’re lucky to live in a time when our operating system is increasingly well understood.